Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Sunday Night

Not that long ago I found myself in a nice hotel room on a Sunday afternoon. By not that long ago I mean more recently than most of the encounters I describe here. (So... this fucking century? - ed.) And I didn't just find myself there, I meant to be there. After all I was paying for the room and I had driven a few hours to get there so "found myself" in the hotel is a stupid way to write it.So scratch that first sentence. I haven't written anything for about six months or so. I'm rusty. Go easy on me, OK?It was a Sunday. I got that basic thought down pretty clearly up above. A young friend of mine, Candy, was meeting me there and she was overdue. Not so late that I was worried, but a little late. I waited and relaxed by exploring the 100 plus channels. Many guys relax this very same way, by endlessly changing channels over and over and over again. Very therapeutic. Women often act annoyed when we do this in their presence. But we do it for two simple reasons: 1. we can 2. it's a way of shutting up TV people who bore us. Like when on ESPN they stop talking about baseball or football to talk about the NBA...*click*. If you're around we add a third reason: it pisses you off. I kid because I love.Candy got there and I pulled the cork on the bottle of Cab I had brought. It was a decent wine but not showy. For some reason she had asked me to wear a suit and I might have been the only guy in the county wearing one in the afternoon that Sunday. She had dressed up too and if wearing a suit was the price I had to pay for seeing her like that, well, it was a very small price indeed. Glasses clinked and we tried the wine. Candy doesn't know a lot about wine but she knows that red wine helps her forget that she shouldn't be fucking me. Come to think of it, what more does she need to know about wine than that? I like Cabernet, I don't like sweet wine, so I bought something I liked. Is that too selfish? Not really. If she didn't like it she didn't say. She's such a cute young thing that she thought it was just "amazing" that I brought a bottle of wine. I admit it, I love it when a woman seems grateful. Helpful hint, don't bother faking orgasms. Spend more time faking gratitude. Unless you don't want to get along with men. Which is OK too. My helpful hints are worth exactly what you pay for them. We just had one glass apiece before leaving for the restaurant. The only physical contact we'd had was when I opened the hotel door for her and we hugged and kissed cheeks. On the drive to the restaurant she started to apologize for being late... Jerry didn't leave for the airport as early as she had figured he would.... she couldn't start getting ready until he was definitely gone and not popping right back for something he forgot... 'cause then he'd wonder why she was getting all dressed up as soon as he was out the door on a cross country business trip... then she made a wrong turn on the hour drive to the hotel... and had to dig through her bag for the directions... 'cause she didn't want to put it in the GPS 'cause Jerry might find the hotel in there and wonder what the hell she was doing going to a hotel... and she didn't know how to delete anything from the damn GPS... and she wasn't even sure she had put the directions in the right purse... but she had... and if it had been five minutes longer she would have called me... but she was sure she was getting close so she didn't and ... I almost reached for the remote. But, her jabbering away didn't really bother me. It was kind of nice actually because it meant she was really nervous. I liked knowing that she was all keyed up about the evening ahead. We were going to share a really good dinner. And then we were going back to the hotel and we were going to do unspeakable things to each other for hours and hours. It excited her. And that was good."I wasn't worried. I knew you'd make it, or let me know if something had gone wrong. Anyway, it was worth the wait," I said."Thanks, Wil," she said.And that was the last I heard about Jerry that night.